Vogue Italia is the latest offender to sexualise violence against women
in the name of fashion. Radhika Sanghani unpacks 'shockvertising' and
the deeper message these sorts of campaigns send

I could easily spend the next few hundred words listing all the fashion ads that show dead, wounded or assaulted women, but instead I’ll just remind you of two of the most famous: the Dolce & Gabbana ad where a well-oiled model pins down a woman beneath him and the Calvin Klein ad where it looks like Lara Stone’s being raped.

But there’s a new most recent offender: Vogue Italia. ItsApril issue has a cover storyto raise awareness of domestic violence. So far, so positive. But instead of promoting it in a powerful, moving way, it has decided to go for a ‘horror movie’ theme.

An image from the shoot

Quite literally, it depicts scenes from horror movies. You see bruised, blood-spattered and terrified (but still gorgeous) young women. It even comes with a mini video shot in the style of a Japanese horror movie, where we see more female victims and corpses.

You don’t even need to watch the video to know that it is incredibly disturbing, and the exact opposite of what any domestic violence victim would want to see. So why on earth has Franca Sozzani, Vogue Italia’s editor-in-chief done this – and who is she aiming it at?

My instinct would be that it’s to shock. After all, isn’t that what all these fashion magazines do to sell copies – try and create something controversial so that other publications will re-publish it and thus give them more coverage (yes, like I’m doing now, but I am making a serious point here). There’s even a term for it: shockvertising.

That’s what Marc Jacobs was trying to do when he did a shoot with Miley Cyrus - for once she wasn’t the point of controversy; instead it was the lifeless female corpse next to her. Similarly, a 2013 ad for hotel chain The Standard showed a woman lying face down on the pavement with a suitcase crushing her. Why would you advertise a glamorous hotel with a picture of a faceless corpse if not for shock value?

Miley Cyrus in the Marc Jacobs shoot

Well, according to The Standard – who subsequently discontinued the ad - it was because an artist created the image, so it was just 'contemporary art'. The same thing happened to Vice magazine, who did a fashion shoot showing the suicides of famous literary women. It was graphic and inappropriate, showing detailed methods of suicide in a way that goes against the code of conduct for media outlets.

So what did it do? It took down the shoot, andsent out a similar apology, saying it was “an art editorial point-of-view.” The fact that offenders are taking the photos down suggests they did not expect the response they gathered – no publisher commissions a piece hoping they’ll have to take it down ASAP.

It seems to me that the fashion industry doesn’t just have a tendency towards images depicting sexual violence against women – it has a strong habit in having to take down said photos and defending them as ‘art’. It makes me wonder if actually these editors are aware of just how controversial these images will be, or if they’re so used to depicting women in sexual, passive positions that they don’t realise how inappropriate it can be to take it one step further.

An image from Vogue Italia's shoot

Take Sozzani. When she was explaining why she chose to do this ‘horror’ photo shoot, shetold The Independentthat her original idea was "cinematic". It was only after the shoot was over that she read about violence against women, and realised she could use her horror pictures to promote the issue. She told her team: “Why don't we give that message again, especially that the horror of life is bigger than the one that you can see in the movies.”

Really? Is that how you would raise the profile of violence against women in a positive way? Nobody I know would read about something so serious and immediately decide the best way to raise awareness about it is through a graphic photo shoot of screaming women covered in blood.

Yes, every photo shoot is there for publicity and a little bit of shockvertising is part and parcel of that, but I do think that too many of these fashion-heads are unaware of just how distasteful and dehumanising that this approach can be. On some level, Vogue Italia and all of the other offenders, think portraying women as sexualised, passive victims is normal, and to me, that’s the most shocking part of all.